


Drive-Thru

by AidanChase



Category: Heroes of Olympus - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Road Trip, frustrated mom reyna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 07:43:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4617048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidanChase/pseuds/AidanChase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reyna leads the Roman troops to New York to face the Greeks. It might be the most difficult thing she's ever done as a praetor. But it has nothing to do with the fact that there's a war coming and everything to do with the fact that you can't escort a fleet of teenagers on a road-trip up the east coast and NOT go crazy doing it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drive-Thru

**Author's Note:**

> My first time writing Romans! I just got to the part in Mark of Athena (3rd readthrough?) where Piper sees an angry Reyna driving a fleet of SUVs up the east coast and I wondered why it never occurred to me what the actual practicality of that would look like. So here you go. It's short but I had a lot of fun with it.

By the time they reached Washington, D.C., Reyna wanted to tear her braid off and shove it Octavian’s throat. Or Dakota’s. Or literally anyone in her van.

“You missed the conjunction!” Octavian shrieked. The old map was spread over his lap, and Reyna seriously doubted his ability to read it. Octavian had been on a grand total of two quests in his seven years at camp and Reyna had participated in… well, more than she could count, actually.

“Is there a rest stop nearby?” Dakota asked.

Dakota, as a leader of the fifth cohort, should have been driving his own van. But he’d rear-ended one of the first cohort’s SUVs in a sugar-trip, which resulted in Octavian threatening to remove his Centurion-ship (which Octavian didn’t have the power to do), and it had ended with both of them in her van with a few mixed members of the first and fifth cohorts.

“We’ll stop in D.C. for food,” Reyna said. “You can wait until then.”

Dakota added a Kool-Aid packet to his water bottle. “I’m not sure I can.”

“Reyna, we have to turn around!”

“Does anyone have like, a spare cup?” Dakota asked, turning around to face the legionnaires behind him.

One girl from the first cohort turned bright red and nearly snapped off her probatio tablet.

“We will stop in about five minutes,” Reyna said, careful to keep her voice calm. She was trying to transfer patience to those in her car, but it wasn’t working. She wondered if it was because Octavian didn’t respect her as a leader.

“Reyna, are you even going to listen to my directions?”

“We need dinner,” she said. “And dinner is in front of us.” She pointed to the Burger King sign just ahead of them, then exited the highway.

“We don’t have time to stop!”

“Octavian,” Dakota said, “if we’re not stopping, can I borrow your water bottle?”

Octavian went silent and Reyna pulled into the Burger King drive-thru.

“I’ll take four cheeseburgers and an extra-large Dr. Pepper and large fries,” Dakota told her as he opened the door of the car.

“Everyone is getting chicken nuggets,” Octavian said. “We can’t afford to feed everyone custom meals and extra large drinks.”

Dakota looked ready to fight, right there in the Burger King drive-thru.

“Everyone can place their own order,” Reyna said through her teeth. “But Dakota, you are not getting an extra-large soda.”

She waited to see if Dakota would fight her on this, but finally he shrugged his shoulders and went inside to use the restroom.

Suddenly, Reyna had six demigods shouting their orders at her. She felt like a preschool teacher at recess. In frustration she grabbed a pen and a receipt from their earlier stop at the gas station convenience store. “Everyone write down what you want then get out of the car! I want four laps around the strip mall parking lot. All of you!”

The six demigods went quiet and as soon as they had written down their dinner order, got out of the car.

Reyna sank low into her seat and closed her eyes.

“Shall I take the wheel?” Octavian asked.

She’d forgotten he was still there. “I’m fine.” She sat up straighter. “We’ll stop for the night in a few hours.”

“We don’t have to stop. We can trade drivers and drive straight through the night.”

Reyna knew Octavian was right, but she remembered her promise to Annabeth. She needed to slow the Romans down before they reached New York. “We’ll take a vote on it,” she finally said, and ordered for her car.

When Octavian’s burger came back with pickles, they went back through the drive-thru again. Then Dakota ran inside for a refill. Then the girl on probatio had to run inside to use the bathroom. Then all five of the other legionnaires had to go inside to use the bathroom. Then Octavian wanted more fries. Then all of them wanted more fries.

Reyna thought she wouldn’t have to try very hard to slow the Romans down. But it was going to take every ounce of her patience to actually get them to New York or she would end up running the van off the side of the road and into the Atlantic Ocean.


End file.
